It was half a day's march from those glittering snow- fields into thelow country, and when that was reached I found myself amongst quiteanother people.
The land was no longer fat and flowery, giving every kind of producefor the asking, but stony for the most part, and, where we first came onvegetation, overgrown by firs, with a pine which looked to me like aspecies which went to make the coal measures in my dear but distantplanet. More than this I cannot say, for there are no places in the worldlike mess-room and quarter-deck for forgetting school learn- ing. Insteadof the glorious wealth of parti-coloured vege- tation my eyes had beenaccustomed to lately, here they rested on infertile stretches of marshlandintersected by moss-covered gravel shoots, looking as though they hadbeen pushed into the plains in front of extinct glaciers coming down fromthe region behind us. On the low hills away from the sea those sombreevergreen forests with an undergrowth of moss and red lichens were morevariegated with light foliage, and indeed the pines proved to be but afringe to the Arctic ice, giving way rapidly to more typical Martianvegetation each mile we marched to the southward.
As for the inhabitants, they seemed, like my guide, rough, uncouthfellows, but honest enough when you came to know them. Anintroduction, however, was highly desirable. I chanced upon the firstnative as he was gathering reindeer- moss. My companion was somelittle way behind at the moment, and when the gentle aborigine saw thestranger he stared hard for a moment, then, turning on his heels, withextraordinary swiftness flung at me half a pound of hard flint stone. Hadhis aim been a little more careful this humble narrative had never appearedon the Broadway bookstalls. As it was, the pebble, missing my head byan inch or two, splintered into a hundred fragments on a rock behind, andwhile I was debating whether a revengeful rush at the slinger or a strategicadvance to the rear were more advisable, my guide called out to hiscountryman-"Ho! you base prowler in the morasses; you eater of un- clean vegetation, do you not see this is a ghost I am con- ducting, a dweller inthe ice cliffs, a spirit ten thousand years old? Put by your sling lest hewither you with a glance." And, very reasonably, surprised, the aboriginedid as he was bid and cautiously advanced to inspect me.
The news soon spread over the countryside that my jewel- hunter wasbringing a live "spook" along with him, con- siderable curiosity mixedwith an awe all to my advantage characterising the people we metthereafter. Yet the won- der was not so great as might have beenexpected, for these people were accustomed to meeting the tags of lostraces, and though they stared hard, their interest was chiefly in hearinghow, when, and where I had been found, whether I bit or kicked, or hadany other vices, and if I possessed any commercial value.
My guide's throat must have ached with the repetition of the narrative,but as he made the story redound greatly to his own glory, he put upcheerfully with the hoarseness. In this way, walking and talking alternately,we travelled during daylight through a country which slowly lost itsrugged features and became more and more inhabited, the hardy peopleliving in scattered villages in contradiction to the debased city-lovingHither folk.
About nightfall we came to a sea-fishers' hamlet, where, after the oldman had explained my exalted nature and ven- erable antiquity, I wasoffered shelter for the night.
My host was the headman, and I must say his bearing towards thesupernatural was most unaffected. If it had been an Avenue hotel I couldnot have found more handsome treatment than in that reed-thatched hut.
They made me wash and rest, and then were all agog for my history; butthat I postponed, contenting myself with telling them I had been lately inSeth, and had come thence to see them via the ice valley--to all of whichthey listened with the simplicity of children. Afterwards I turned onthem, and openly mar- velled that so small a geographical distance as therewas between that land and this could make so vast a human difference.
"The truth, O dweller in blue shadows of primordial ice, is," said the mostintelligent of the Thither folk as we sat over fried deer-steak in his hut thatevening, "we who are MEN, not Peri-zad, not overstayed fairies like those you have been amongst, are newcomers here on this shore. We came buta few generations ago from where the gold curtains of the sun lie behindthe westward pine-trees, and as we came we drove, year by year, thosefays, those spent triflers, back before us. All this land was theirs once,and more and more towards our old home. You may still see traces ofharbours dug and cities built thousands of years ago, when the Hither folkwere living men and women-- not their shadows. The big water outsidestops us for a space, but," he added, laughing gruffly and taking a draughtof a strong beer he had been heating by the fire, "King Ar-hap has theirpretty noses between his fingers; he takes tribute and girls while he getsready--they say he is nearly ready this summer, and if he is, it will not bemuch of an excuse he will need to lick up the last of those triflers, thosepretences of manhood."Then we fell to talking of Ar-hap, his subjects and town, and I learnedthe tides had swept me a long way to the northward of the proper routebetween the capitals of the two races, that day they carried me into theDead-Men's Ice, as these entertainers of mine called the northern snows.
To get back to the place previously aimed at, where the woodmen roadcame out on the seashore, it was necessary to go either by boat, aroundabout way through a maze of channels, "as tangled as the grass rootsin autumn"; or, secondly, by a couple of days' marching due southwardacross the base of the great peninsula we were on, and so strike blue wateragain at the long-sought-for harbour.
As I lay dozing and dreaming on a pile of strange furs in the corner ofthe hut that evening I made up my mind for the land journey tomorrow,having had enough for the mo- ment of nautical Martian adventures; andthis point settled, fell again to wondering what made me follow so recklessa quest in the way I was doing; asking myself again and again what wasgazelle-eyed Heru to me after all, and why should it matter even as muchas the value of a brass waist- coat button whether Hath had her or Ar-hap?
What a fool I was to risk myself day by day in quaint and dangerousadventures, wearing out good Government shoe-leather in other men'squarrels, all for a silly slip of royal girlhood who, by this time, wasprobably making herself comfortable and forgetting both Hath and me in the arms of her rough new lord.
And from Heru my mind drifted back dreamily to poor An, and Seth,the city of fallen magnificence, where the spent masters of a strange planetnow lived on suffer- ance--the ghosts of their former selves. Where wasAn, where the revellers on the morning--so long ago it seemed!--whenfirst that infernal rug of mine translated a chance wish into a horriblereality and shot me down here, a stranger and an outcast? Where was themagic rug itself? Where my steak and tomato supper? Who had eaten it?
Who was drawing my pay? If I could but find the rug when I got back toSeth, gods! but I would try if it would not return whence I had come, andas swiftly, out of all these silly coils and adventuring.
So musing, presently the firelight died down, and bulky forms of hide-wrapped woodmen sleeping on the floor slowly disappeared in obscuritylike ranges of mountains disappearing in the darkness of night. All thoseuncouth forms, and the throb of the sea outside, presently faded upon mysenses, and I slept the heavy sleep of one whose wakefulness gives waybefore an imperious physical demand. All through the long hours of thenight, while the waves outside champed upon the gravels, and thewoodmen snored and grunted uneasily as they simultaneously dreamt ofthe day's hunting and digested its proceeds, I slept; and then when dawnbegan to break I passed from that heavy stupor into another and lighterrealm, wherein fancy again rose superior to bodily fatigue, and events ofthe last few days passed in procession through my mind.
I dreamt I was lunching at a fashionable seaside resort with Polly atmy side, and An kept bringing us melons, which grew so monstrous everytime a knife was put into them that poor Polly screamed aloud. I dreamtI was afloat on a raft, hotly pursued by my tailor, whose bare and shinyhead--may Providence be good to him!--was garlanded with roses, whilein his fist was a bunch of unpaid bills, the which he waved aloft, shoutingto me to stop. And thus we danced down an ink-black river until he hadchiveyed me into the vast hall of the Admiralty, where a fearsomeSecretary, whose golden teeth rattled and dropped from his head withmingled cold and anger, towered above me as he asked why I was absentfrom my ship without leave. And I was just mumbling out excuses while stooping to pick up his golden dentistry, when some one stirring in the hutaroused me. I started up on my elbow and looked around. Where was I?
For a minute all was confused and dark. The heavy mound-like forms ofsleeping men, the dim outlines of their hunting gear upon the walls, thepale sea beyond, half seen through the open doorway, just turning livid inthe morning light; and then as my eyes grew more ac- customed to theobscurity, and my stupid senses returned, I recognised the surroundings,and, with a sigh, remembered yesterday's adventures. However, it wouldnever do to mope; so, rising silently and picking a way through humanlumber on the floor, I went out and down to the water's edge, where"shore-going" clothes, as we sailors call them, were slipped off, and Iplunged into the sea for a swim.
It was a welcome dip, for I needed the plunge physically andintellectually, but it came to an abrupt conclusion. The Thither folkapparently had never heard of this form of enjoyment; to them water stoodfor drinking or drowning, nothing else, and since one could not drink thesea, to be in it meant, even for a ghost, to drown. Consequently, whenthe word went round the just rousing villages that "He-on-foot- from-afar"was adrift in the waves, rescue parties were hur- riedly organised, a boatlaunched, and, in spite of all my kicking and shouting (which they took tobe evidence of my semi-moribund condition), I was speedily hauled out byhairy and powerful hands, pungent herbs burnt un- der my no............